You’ve been on my mind
One word
One song
Your name
My skin still remembers the imprint of your fingertips
The heat of your lips
I still remember your smile
And that it was only for me
These days I’m drowning my sorrows
But I can’t drown the sin of you
These days I’m craving pain and heartache
But no one hurts me like you
You’ve been on my mind
But you’ve got whiskey in your lungs
And a devil in your bed
You’ve got faded memories of me
Broken promises
And empty hearted smiles
You’ve got a house full of relics
And plenty of reasons to forget
But please don’t forget me
I’d be better off dead

I long for a love that is soul deep in it’s depth.
Death defying and joyous.
I long for an understanding
Unconditional love.
I long.
I long for quiet comfortable mornings
Listening to the rustle of life in the sheets next to me
I long for whispers filled with your smile
And the feeling that facing the day,
Facing life, is possible
As long as you are by my side
I long.
I long for a love that can see the darkness lurking beneath my skin
Fighting for possession of my mind
I long for a love that can learn
To love me
Scars and darkness and all
But longing leaves me hollow
For even in my longings,
You are faceless.

No one knows me like the razor blade
Like blood stains on sleeves
Like a trail of scars on brown skin hidden by hoodies in July
Or worn proudly like faded medals from wartime
No one knows me like ink stains on my fingertips
Like longing
Like regret
No one know knows me like numbness where there should be pain
And pain where there should be life

I hope one day you fall for a black girl
So you can watch as she builds herself
From the bones of slave ships
And the ghosts of freedom riders
Into a mold that doesn’t fit right
Like a mannequin with missing pieces
She’s just a body
With no soul
That’s how they’ll try to justify tearing her down
That’s what they’ll whisper to themselves at night
While she swings in the distant firelight
As she suffocates
Inhaling the ashes of ancestors dead and forgotten
Because hashtags weren’t invented yet
And you’ll watch as bricks crumble and foundations cave
And she falls
And she’ll pick herself up from the rubble and she’ll start again
And she’ll not ask for help
For you have no place there

I hope one day you fall for a black girl
So you can see the disbelief in her eyes when you tell her she is beautiful
Because beauty is for white girls
And she ain’t never been no white girl
She’s never seen springtime in her own eyes
And innocence in her own hands
No she is bitter corners and twisted roots
She is strange fruit hanging in that white man’s lawn
All freak show
And no beauty
This world wasn’t made to be kind to the likes of her
The light is a fickle jealous creature
That’s why beauty forged in darkness is forged in secret

I hope one day you fall for a black girl
And you can see the power in her
That you can see that worlds were built
Civilizations were built
Upon her shoulders
So that you can see them strip the royalty from her blood
Until all that remains is a skeleton wrapped in shackles
And a sense of faded greatness
So that you can see all the doubt seared upon her soul
Because though she is strong enough,
Powerful enough, to bear the ills of the world
Is she powerful enough to shoulder her own pain?